But that guilty secret was still locked within her own heart,
weighing heavily upon her conscience, but still unconfessed, still
unsuspected by others. Ever since that miserable afternoon she had
shrunk from meeting her classmates, and although she had been obliged
to do so at school, she had avoided all other opportunities of seeing
them, and on one excuse and another had refused to attend the
meetings of the club which came together every Friday afternoon, the
place of rendezvous being at Mrs. Bradford's, Maggie being the
president as she had been the originator of the club.
It was true that Gracie had later discovered that the ruined paper
was one of her own, a composition on the very same subject as Lena's,
and which had, by the merest accident, and without her knowledge,
been exchanged for that of the young classmate whom she chose to
consider as her rival; and this had in some measure relieved the
weight of sorrow and remorse she had felt when Lena was severely
burned and lay for days hovering between life and death. But she
could not shut her eyes or blind her conscience to the fact that she
had been guilty in intention, if not in actual deed, and she could
not shake off the haunting sense of shame or the feeling that others
must know of the contemptible action of which she had been guilty.
Knowing nothing of this, Maggie and the other members of the club
believed that her avoidance of them and her low spirits were caused
by shame and distress for the bad temper and unkindness she had shown
to Lena on that memorable day; and now Maggie, feeling sorry for her
and also very loath to have any unpleasantness in the club, would
fain have persuaded her to join them once more and to put things on
their old footing.
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